Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.
A man in his development runs for a little while parallel with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile for his fellow travellers; and only at last, after a brief companionship with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into the dignity of pure manhood.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Out at sea, the universe has dwindled to a little circle of crumpled water, that journeys with you day after day, and to which you seem bound by some enchantment.
With the meal there was karaoke. As the Chinese waiters brought the food, everyone at the restaurant sang “shanson,” the gravelly, syrupy gangster ballads that have become some of Russia’s favorite pop music. Shanson reflect the gangsters’ journeys to the center of Russian culture. These used to be underground, prison songs, full of gangster slang, tales of Siberian labor camps and missing your mother. Now every taxi driver and grocery plays them. “Vladimirsky Tsentral” is a wedding classic. Tipsy brides across the country in cream-puff wedding dresses and high, thin heels slow-dance with their drunker grooms: “The thaw is thinning underneath the bars of my cell / but the Spring of my life has passed so fast.” At the Chinese restaurant Miami Stas sang along too, but he seemed too meek, too obliging to be a gangster.
"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined, hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension." -- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
"What do you mean?" replied Marius. "Ah! come now, we are not going to permit any more journeys. You shall never leave us again. You belong to us. We shall not loose our hold of you."
"Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and Chateau-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams. These priests are all thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part, I am for Caesar alone." Etc., etc.
"Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very decidedly carried away, and, having quite made up her mind that her stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery never for an instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the gentleman's attentions, and the effect was increased by the loudly expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel began to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as far as it would go if a real effect were to be produced. There were meetings, and an engagement, which would finally secure the girl's affections from turning towards anyone else. But the deception could not be kept up forever. These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous. The thing to do was clearly to bring the business to an end in such a dramatic manner that it would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's mind and prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and hence also the allusions to a possibility of something happening on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not listen to another man. As far as the church door he brought her, and then, as he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of a four-wheeler and out at the other. I think that was the chain of events, Mr. Windibank!"
As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's presence. He was ashamed to express his new masonic views, which had been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and that other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a garden-chair,--a light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. It had been placed there since my last visit, and I entered, that same day, on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she was tired of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room, and across the landing, and round the other room. Over and over and over again, we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months.
"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden, having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.
"My journeys became more and more extensive and more productive. Assunta took care of all, and our little fortune increased. One day as I was setting off on an expedition, 'Go,' said she; 'at your return I will give you a surprise.' I questioned her, but in vain; she would tell me nothing, and I departed. Our expedition lasted nearly six weeks; we had been to Lucca to take in oil, to Leghorn for English cottons, and we ran our cargo without opposition, and returned home full of joy. When I entered the house, the first thing I beheld in the middle of Assunta's chamber was a cradle that might be called sumptuous compared with the rest of the furniture, and in it a baby seven or eight months old. I uttered a cry of joy; the only moments of sadness I had known since the assassination of the procureur were caused by the recollection that I had abandoned this child. For the assassination itself I had never felt any remorse. Poor Assunta had guessed all. She had profited by my absence, and furnished with the half of the linen, and having written down the day and hour at which I had deposited the child at the asylum, had set off for Paris, and had reclaimed it. No objection was raised, and the infant was given up to her. Ah, I confess, your excellency, when I saw this poor creature sleeping peacefully in its cradle, I felt my eyes filled with tears. 'Ah, Assunta,' cried I, 'you are an excellent woman, and heaven will bless you.'"
"How wicked of you to have left us like that! Where did you go? Why have you stayed away so long? Formerly your journeys only lasted three or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: 'He is absent.' How long have you been back? Why did you not let us know? Do you know that you are very much changed? Ah! what a naughty father! he has been ill, and we have not known it! Stay, Marius, feel how cold his hand is!"
3:6. He stood and measured the earth. He beheld, and melted the nations: and the ancient mountains were crushed to pieces. The hills of the world were bowed down by the journeys of his eternity.
"I should think so!" exclaimed Madame Magloire. "Monseigneur has not even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days."
When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,--furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.
"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case _here_. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys--and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself _near_ her family under less than _half_ the present distance."
All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now pigs, now men,--never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out, and in taking it fell asleep.
4. After Beowulf has reigned prosperously for fifty years, his country is ravaged by a fiery dragon, which inhabits an ancient burial-mound, full of costly treasure. The royal hall itself is burned to the ground. The aged king resolves to fight, unaided, with the dragon. Accompanied by eleven chosen warriors, he journeys to the barrow. Bidding his companions retire to a distance, he takes up his position near the entrance to the mound--an arched opening whence issues a boiling stream. I The dragon hears Beowulf's shout of defiance, and rushes forth, breathing flames. The fight begins; Beowulf is all but overpowered, and the sight is so terrible that his men, all but one, seek safety in flight. The young Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, though yet untried in battle, cannot, even in obedience to his lord's prohibition, refrain from going to his help. With Wiglaf's aid, Beowulf slays the dragon, but not before he has received his own death-wound. Wiglaf enters the barrow, and returns to show the dying king the treasures that he has found there. With his last breath Beowulf names Wiglaf his successor, and ordains that his ashes shall be enshrined in a great mound, placed on a lofty cliff, so that it may be a mark for sailors far out at sea. Entry: 4
BRAHMS, JOHANNES (1833-1897), German composer, was born in Hamburg on the 7th of May 1833. He was the son of a double-bass player in the Hamburg city theatre and received his first musical instruction from his father. After some lessons from O. Cossel, he went to Cossel's master, Eduard Marxsen of Altona, whose experience and artistic taste directed the young man's genius into the highest paths. A couple of public appearances as a pianist were hardly an interruption to the course of his musical studies, and these were continued nearly up to the time when Brahms accepted an engagement as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist, Remenyi, for a concert tour in 1853. At Göttingen there occurred a famous _contretemps_ which had a most important though indirect influence on the whole after-life of the young player. A piano on which he was to play the "Kreutzer" sonata of Beethoven with Remenyi turned out to be a semitone below the required pitch; and Brahms played the part by heart, transposing it from A to B flat, in such a way that the great violinist, Joachim, who was present and discerned what the feat implied, introduced himself to Brahms, and laid the foundation of a life-long friendship. Joachim gave him introductions to Liszt at Weimar and to Schumann at Düsseldorf; the former hailed him for a time as a member of the advanced party in music, on the strength of his E flat minor scherzo, but the misapprehension was not of long continuance. The introduction to Schumann impelled that master, now drawing near the tragic close of his career, to write the famous article "Neue Bahnen," in which the young Brahms was proclaimed to be the great composer of the future, "he who was to come." The critical insight in Schumann's article is all the more surprising when it is remembered how small was the list of Brahms's works at the time. A string quartet, the first pianoforte sonata, the scherzo already mentioned, and the earliest group of songs, containing the dramatic "Liebestreu," are the works which drew forth the warm commendations of Schumann. In December 1853 Brahms gave a concert at Leipzig, as a result of which the firms of Breitkopf & Haertel and of Senff undertook to publish his compositions. In 1854 he was given the post of choir-director and music-master to the prince of Lippe-Detmold, but he resigned it after a few years, going first to Hamburg, and then to Zürich, where he enjoyed the friendship and artistic counsel of Theodor Kirchner. The unfavourable verdict of the Leipzig Gewandhaus audience upon his pianoforte concerto in D minor op. 15, and several remarkably successful appearances in Vienna, where he was appointed director of Ihe Singakademie in 1863, were the most important external events of Brahms's life, but again he gave up the conductorship after a few months of valuable work, and for about three years had no fixed place of abode. Concert tours with Joachim or Stockhausen were undertaken, and it was not until 1867 that he returned to Vienna, or till 1872 that he chose it definitely as his home, his longest absence from the Austrian capital being between 1874 and 1878, when he lived near Heidelberg. From 1871 to 1874 he conducted the concerts of the "Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde," but after the later date he occupied no official position of any kind. With the exception of journeys to Italy in the spring, or to Switzerland in the summer, he rarely left Vienna. He refused to come to England to take the honorary degree of Mus.D. offered by the university of Cambridge; the university of Breslau made him Ph.D. in 1881; in 1886 he was created a knight of the Prussian order _Pour le mérite_, and in 1889 was presented with the freedom of his native city. He died in Vienna on the 3rd of April 1897. Entry: BRAHMS
Though from this time forward Basel became the centre of occupation and interest for Erasmus, yet for the next few years he was mainly in the Netherlands. On the completion of the New Testament in 1516 he returned to his friends in England; but his appointment, then recent, as councillor to the young king Charles, brought him back to Brussels in the autumn. In the spring of 1517 he went for the last time to England, about a dispensation from wearing his canonical dress, obtained originally from Julius II. and recently confirmed by Leo X., and in May 1518 he journeyed to Basel for three months to set the second edition of the New Testament in progress. But with these exceptions he remained in proximity to the court, living much at Louvain, where he took great interest in the foundation of Hieronymus Busleiden's Collegium Trilingue. His circumstances had improved so much, by pensions, the presents which were showered upon him, and the sale of his books, that he was now in a position to refuse all proposals which would have interfered with his cherished independence. The general ardour for the restoration of the arts and of learning created an aristocratic public, of which Erasmus was supreme pontiff. Luther spoke to the people and the ignorant; Erasmus had the ear of the educated class. His friends and admirers were distributed over all the countries of Europe, and presents were continually arriving from small as well as great, from a donation of 200 florins, made by Pope Clement VII., down to sweetmeats and comfits contributed by the nuns of Cologne (_Ep._ 666). From England, in particular, he continued to receive supplies of money. In the last year of his life Thomas Cromwell sent him 20 angels, and Archbishop Cranmer 18. Though Erasmus led a very hard-working and far from luxurious life, and had no extravagant habits, yet he could not live upon little. The excessive delicacy of his constitution, not pampered appetite, exacted some unusual indulgences. He could not bear the stoves of Germany, and required an open fireplace in the room in which he worked. He was afflicted with the stone, and obliged to be particular as to what he drank. Beer he could not touch. The white wines of Baden or the Rhine did not suit him; he could only drink those of Burgundy or Franche-Comté. He could neither eat, nor bear the smell of, fish. "His heart," he said, "was Catholic, but his stomach was Lutheran." For his constant journeys he required two horses, one for himself and one for his attendant. And though he was almost always found in horse-flesh by his friends, the keep had to be paid for. For his literary labours and his extensive correspondence he required one or more amanuenses. He often had occasion, on his own business, or on that of Froben's press, to send special couriers to a distance, employing them by the way in collecting the free gifts of his tributaries. Entry: ERASMUS
Hawthorne departed for Europe in the summer of 1853, and returned to the United States in the summer of 1860. Of the seven years which he passed in Europe five were spent in attending to the duties of his consulate at Liverpool, and in little journeys to Scotland, the Lakes and elsewhere, and the remaining two in France and Italy. They were quiet and uneventful, coloured by observation and reflection, as his note-books show, but productive of only one elaborate work, _Transformation, or The Marble Faun_, which he sketched out during his residence in Italy, and prepared for the press at Leamington, England, whence it was despatched to America and published in 1860. Entry: HAWTHORNE
When St Paul reminds Timothy (1 Tim. vi. 13) of his confession before many witnesses he does not seem to imply more than confession of Christ as king. He calls it "the beautiful confession" to which Christ Jesus had borne witness before Pontius Pilate, and charges Timothy before God, who quickeneth all things, to keep this commandment. Some writers, notably Professor Zahn,[5] piecing together this text with 2 Tim. i. 13, ii. 8, iv. 1, 2, reconstructs a primitive Apostles' Creed of Antioch, the city from which St Paul started on his missionary journeys. But there is no mention of a third article in the creed, beyond a reference to the Holy Ghost in the context of 2 Tim. i. 14, which would prove the apostolic use of a Trinitarian confession imaginable as the parent of the later Eastern and Western forms. The eunuch's creed interpolated in Acts viii. 57, "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God," since the reading was known to Irenaeus, probably represents the form of baptismal confession used in some church of Asia Minor, and supplies us with the type of a primitive creed. This theory is confirmed by the evidence of the Johannine epistles (1 John iv. 15, v. 5; cf. Heb. iv. 14). Entry: 1
At the instance of Bunsen and other scientists, Barth and Adolf Overweg, a Prussian astronomer, were appointed colleagues of James Richardson, an explorer of the Sahara who had been selected by the British government to open up commercial relations with the states of the central and western Sudan. The party left Tripoli early in 1850, but the deaths of Richardson (March 1851) and Overweg (September 1852) left Barth to early on the mission alone. He returned to Europe in September 1855, after one of the most fruitful expeditions ever undertaken in inner Africa. In addition to journeys across the Sahara, Barth traversed the country from Lake Chad and Bagirmi on the east to Timbuktu on the west and Cameroon on the south, making prolonged sojourns in the ancient sultanates or emirates of Bornu, Kano, Nupe, Sokoto and Gando and at Timbuktu. He studied minutely the topography, history, civilizations and resources of the countries he visited. The story of his travels was published simultaneously in English and German, under the title _Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa_ (1857-1858, 5 vols.). For accuracy, interest, variety and extent of information Barth's _Travels_ have few rivals among works of the kind. It is a book that will always rank as a standard authority on the regions in question, of which a great part, under the name of Nigeria, has since come under British rule. Except a C.B., Barth himself received no recognition of his services from the British government. He returned to Germany, where he prepared a collection of Central African vocabularies (Gotha, 1862-1866). In 1858 he undertook another journey in Asia Minor, and in 1862 visited Turkey in Europe. In the following year he was appointed professor of geography at Berlin University and president of the Geographical Society. He died at Berlin on the 25th of November 1865. Entry: BARTH
When Otto III. died in January 1002 there remained no representative of the elder branch of the imperial family, and several candidates came forward for the vacant throne. Among these candidates was Henry of Bavaria, son of Duke Henry the Quarrelsome and a great-grandson of Henry the Fowler, and at Mainz in June 1002 this prince was chosen German king as Henry II. Having been recognized as king by the Saxons, the Thuringians and the nobles of Lorraine, the new king was able to turn his attention to the affairs of government, but on the whole his reign was an unfortunate one for Germany. For ten years civil war raged in Lorraine; in Saxony much blood was shed in petty quarrels; and Henry made expeditions against his turbulent vassals in Flanders and Friesland. He also interfered in the affairs of Burgundy, but the acquisition of this kingdom was the work of his successor, Conrad II. During nearly the whole of this reign the Germans were fighting the Poles. Boleslaus of Poland, who was now a very powerful sovereign, having conquered Lusatia and Silesia, brought Bohemia also under his rule and was soon at variance with the German king. Anxious to regain these lands Henry allied himself with some Slavonic tribes, promising not to interfere with the exercise of their heathen religion, while Boleslaus found supporters among the discontented German nobles. The honours of the ensuing war were with Henry, and when peace was made in 1006 Boleslaus gave up Bohemia, but the struggle was soon renewed and neither side had gained any serious advantage when peace was again made in 1013. A third Polish war broke out in 1015. Henry led his troops in person and obtained assistance from the Russians and the Hungarians; peace was concluded in 1018, the Elbe remaining the north-east boundary of Germany. Henry made three journeys to Italy, being crowned king of the Lombards at Pavia in 1004 and emperor at Rome ten years later. Before the latter event, in order to assert his right of sovereignty over Rome, he called himself king of the Romans, a designation which henceforth was borne by his successors until they received the higher title from the pope. Hitherto a sovereign crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle had been "king of the West Franks," or "king of the Franks and Saxons." Henry was generous to the church, to which he looked for support, but he maintained the royal authority over the clergy. Although generally unsuccessful he strove hard for peace, and during this reign the principle of inheritance was virtually established with regard to German fiefs. Entry: MEDIEVAL